In 1919, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford got fed up. They were the “talent” of the silent movies whose popularity had recently swept the nation. Everyone in America clamored to see them on the silver screen, and everyone knew their names. But the “Studios” ruled their daily lives – both professional and personal time. More to the point, the studios controlled very strictly the percentage which they could receive from the massive entertainment “industry” which had exploded onto the national scene in the early part of the 20th century. By 1919, the Studios were a cartel with strict and absolute power over all aspects of the giant film industry.

So Pickford, Fairbanks and Chaplin got fed up, and formed their own studios, known as United Artists, which became an immediate major player for the next 75 years in Hollywood. They financed and produced their own movies, even though they were the talent.

The pattern should be familiar to those who follow big time college sports now: the “talent” – college athletes — have received no part of the ongoing exploding volcano of billions in TV receipts from college football and basketball over the last twenty years. Yet those athletes toil in an environment – in Tuscaloosa, Gainesville, Columbus, or Lincoln, Nebraska — which resembles not just the narrow straightjacket that Pickford, Chaplin and Fairbanks had to live with, but even the “forced” round-the-clock athletic training required of East German athletes in the 1980’s. Student-athletes work under the strict control of Big Time Coaches and Universities. (See our Dec. 15 post, “Control” Over the D-1 Big Time College Football Player, Knitter & Stripper.)

It’s time for big time college athletes to “get fed up.” Just like Pickford, Fairbanks and Chaplin did. Div. 1 Athletes are employees who are not getting paid; just as important, they don’t receive the invaluable protections afforded to all other employees in every state of the U.S., including workers’ compensation for injuries on the field, wage and hour, unemployment, social security, and NLRB.

Less than one percent (the “fat cats” – coaches, administrators and the NCAA bureaucracy) are picking off the millions in annual income; 99% — the real “working talent” — are getting nothing. It’s time: Occupy NCAA.